The Green Berets (1968)

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

U.S. Special Forces troops train in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Col. Mike Kirby (John Wayne) is eager to leave the base and head off to the front. Plenty of men are also eager to follow him. Sneaky Sgt. Petersen is caught stealing supplies and is recruited. Reporter George Beckwith joins them but his paper objects to the war. At the firebase, Capt. Nim (George Takei) leads the local South Vietnamese troops.This is heroic, sincere, propagandistic, and patriotic. It even attempts at light humor. It is old fashion. The local girls are pretty. There is no mention of drugs. We are the good guys and the bad guys are evil. There are heroic deaths on our side and countless deaths by the enemy. This was released months after the Tet offensive. Its success comes from a need to escape the TV news coverage of the war. The cheesy humor does clash like sticking sitcom leftovers into a war drama meal. It's not so much the writing but the music cues and broad comedy. If the jokey scenes can be cut out, this would be much better. It's not the deepest examination of the war but it does have good production value.

This movie begins with a Green Berets officer named "Colonel Mike Kirby" (John Wayne) receiving orders to put together a small team and relocating them to a hastily built garrison called "A Camp 107" which is located in the northern part of South Vietnam bordering both Laos and Cambodia. Also traveling with them is a reporter by the name of "George Beckworth" (David Janssen) who doesn't believe that the United States should be involved in this conflict and needs to see things first hand to ascertain the truth. But as convinced as he is nothing can prepare him for what he finds at "A Camp 107". Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film has more than its share of right-wing bias which is clearly demonstrated by its appeal to patriotism and openly promulgated by a "good guys versus bad guys" mindset. To be sure, there have been other films produced after this one which present a more left-wing view and they are often just as dogmatic in their perspective. Be that as it may, despite the obvious bias, this film contains a good amount of action, some decent comedy here and there and a rather touching moment at the end. That said, while this certainly isn't a great movie by any means, I thought it was still entertaining for the most part I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

THE GREEN BERETS is John Wayne's much-lamented Vietnam War epic which shows the situation in a positive light in regard to America's involvement. The story is heavily politicised and was made as a rebuke to the growing anti-war movement in the USA, which Wayne would have no truck with. Me, all of this subtext stuff is irrelevant, I just want to know if a film is entertaining or not.The answer is a yes here, although THE GREEN BERETS is not without flaws. Running at nearly two and a half hours, the film is overlong and stodgy in places, particularly during the gruelling midsection. Things pick up for some impressively sprawling battle sequences in the latter part, but the special effects aren't quite up to par and the film does look cheap in places.Still, the cast keeps you watching, not least Wayne himself who is all gruff and brave, if you can ignore the fact that he's way too old to be fighting on the front line. Aldo Ray is another favourite of mine and he has a ball as the tough sergeant. The only character I felt out of place was David Janssen's reporter, added to the story to bring some moralising to the piece; it wasn't really required, I thought. George Takei is a welcome presence as a South Vietnamese fighter.THE GREEN BERETS is surprisingly vicious in places, not holding back from showing some of the horrors of warfare in Vietnam; I'm talking brutal jungle traps, kids and animals getting slaughtered, punji sticks everywhere you walk. It's this no-holds-barred approach to the material that keeps it watchable, and a neat counterpoint to the later anti-war Vietnam epics of the 1970s and '80s.

I have no issue with this being a movie in support of the US effort in Vietnam. It's too bad it's just not that good a movie - largely because John Wayne tried to graft a typical 'rollicking' John Wayne adventure replete with 'colorful' characters that like Chekov's gun don't really get used once the story gets "going" but neglected the actual task of... storytelling.First part of the movie consists of assembling the stock characters - I mean troops. Each is supposed to have a special talent essential for the mission - there's even a 'scrounger'. When we finally get to 'nam we get the local color in the form of 'Hamchuk' and his dog. The dog is the only character, once introduced, to get used again. Alas, it's for bringing up the feels.Now, I haven't seen this in a while but I bet there was a knock down, drag out bar fight in this somewhere - you can't get your Rollicking Content Certificate without one. What there wasn't much of - at least till the third act - was actual Special Forces being special. I mean, come the f*** on, two thirds of the movie is spent setting up and defending their jungle tree-house - I mean base.They finally show a Special Forces 'trick' in the way they evacuate some dude by shooting a loop of rope up to a plane dragging a hook. Then they ruin it with some other dude - the token Black Guy - getting splatted against a cartoon mat of bamboo spikes. Wile E Coyote died a little inside on account of that.Real people had to suffer from that government and the war that put that government into power. No need to suffer sitting through this lackluster motion picture...